Daily Kos has a story from Der Spiegle and the preparations for Senator Barack Obama’s speech this coming Thursday.  Hundreds of thousands may attend.

Daily Kos, July 20th

Barack Obama’s planned campaign rally and speech in Berlin on Thursday is roiling the German political class, reports Der Spiegel (article in German). Authorities in Berlin are preparing for a million spectators, which would instantly make Obama’s speech the biggest political event in that country since unification in 1990. There are even plans to close down the street, a mile long, and replicate the setup during the World Cup with massive projection screens. Inevitably with a political earthquake of this magnitude, there’s some controversy stoked by conservatives.

Obama will be speaking on the eastern side of the Victory Column - the Siegessäule - a monument to the Prussian victories in the wars of unification that preceded Bismarck’s establishment of the Second Empire. The speech itself will be focused on the Trans-Atlantic relationship and give a preview of the foreign policy approaches of an Obama administration towards our NATO allies.

Team Obama picked what is arguably one of the most historically evocative spots in Berlin for his speech, and that history is not uniformly benign. Conservative members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, are pointing out, correctly, that the Victory Column was built in triumph over countries Germany defeated in its quest for unification; Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, France in 1871. But, as is often the case in Berlin, this terrain carries far more associations than that, some inspiring, some evil.

The column was inaugurated in 1873, somewhat less than two years after the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. As you can see, the statue of Victoria on its summit points a laurel wreath into the distance; the direction it’s pointing to is towards Paris, a literal finger in the eye of France. It was built on Königsplatz, “King’s Square”, which later became Platz der Republik, “Square of the Republic”, then Adolf-Hitler-Platz, which needs no translation.

In 1938/1939, as part of the preparations for Hitler’s rebuilding of Berlin into Germania, the capital of the Fourth Reich, the column was moved from its original location across from the Reichstag - which was ordered to not exceed it in height, to demonstrate the respective societal rank of military power and popular democracy in Bismarck’s Germany - to its present location. The supervising architect of the move was one Albert Speer. During the move, the column was heightened, to give it more visual prominence at what was essentially the Western entrance to Berlin’s government quarter.  Click here to read more at Daily Kos.

John McCain and George Bush feel that it would be surrender to pull troops out of Iraq.  Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister al-Maliki has demanded that the Bush Administration accept a timetable for troop withdrawal.  His recent interview with the German press amounted to an endorsement of Senator Barack Obama’s plan to pull out of Iraq.  This leaves John McCain looking rather silly.  Americans want out, the Iraqi’s want us out, and most of the free world wants us to get out (and help lower oil prices).  John and George are stuck with yesterday’s policy, 3,000 war dead, a trillion dollars of debt and un-cooperative stooges.

New York Times, July 19th 2008
Sarah Wheaton

The policies and whims of American leaders have played a major role in politics in Iraq and elsewhere. And now, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, dipped his toes in the United States’ race for the White House. Mr. Maliki essentially endorsed Senator Barack Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” Mr. Maliki said, according to the magazine’s online English edition. “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Naturally, Mr. Maliki did not want to imply he was backing one candidate over another in a foreign election:

“Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business,” he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

The timing could not be better for Mr. Obama, who began the first leg of his foreign trip in Kabul earlier today, with a stop in Iraq expected later. Mr. Maliki’s comments were published just a day after President Bush agreed to a “general time horizon” for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

This is the largest lead of the campaign season yet.  It also show Senator Obama gathering strength with moderates and independent voters.

Washington Post / ABC News Poll, July 16th 2008

Sen. Barack Obama holds his biggest advantage of the presidential campaign as the candidate best prepared to fix the nation’s ailing economy, but lingering concerns about his readiness to handle international crises are keeping the race competitive, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Overall, the Democrat has a lead of 50 percent to 42 percent over Republican Sen. John McCain among registered voters nationwide, lifted by a big edge among women, and he has also regained an edge among political independents. But it is Obama’s 19-point lead on the economy that has become a particularly steep challenge for McCain.

Economic concerns continue to eclipse other issues, with half the country saying the economy will be “extremely important” to their vote. Gasoline and energy prices, which voters rarely mentioned at the start of the year, come in just behind. The Iraq war, which was again the subject of direct engagement between Obama and McCain yesterday, ranks third. A cluster of domestic issues, including education, health care and Social Security, ranked behind the war, as did the issue of terrorism.

Obama continues to hold an edge over McCain on many domestic policy areas.

The campaign is playing out against the backdrop of a leadership crisis in Washington, with Americans remaining in a generally sour mood about their representatives in the nation’s capital. In the new survey, President Bush’s overall approval rating hit another record low in Post-ABC polling: Twenty-eight percent said they approve of the way he is handling his job, while 69 percent disapprove, including 56 percent who strongly disapprove.  Click here to read more at the Washington Post.  Here is some poll commentary from ABC News.

Do you somehow think John McCain is changing into George Bush before your eyes? Well you’re not alone.  When George says “drill;” well then John says “drill!”  When George says “privatize social security;” John say “private social security accounts.”  Honestly, you can’t even see George’s lips move when John speaks.  Here’s a neat little story from the Tucson Citizen.

 Billy Stanton, Tucson Citizen, July 16th

Poor John McCain. No matter where he goes or what he tries, he’s still seen as a clone of President Bush. Their mirrored identity is irrevocably embedded in the American psyche. So the idea of busting a “little old lady librarian” for a “McCain = Bush” sign seems ludicrous.

It happened, though, on July 7 in downtown Denver.

Carol Kreck - a diminutive, deaf, 60-year-old, part-time librarian - was escorted by police out of a courtyard at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts complex. A McCain town hall there wasn’t to start for another two hours and Kreck wasn’t going to attend. She can’t hear. She was there only because Progress Now e-mailed requests for “bodies” to support a press conference before the event.

“I figured that’s something even a deaf person can do,” Kreck told me. Now the media are having a field day over the little old lady librarian. That’s not the best description of Carol Kreck, however.

During 34 years as a Denver Post reporter, she was better known as a bit of a bulldog. Kreck didn’t rest till she had her facts - and until her editors, including me, had kept her facts straight. She had the qualities you want in a reporter: earnest, hardworking, determined, thorough, fair-minded and ethical. Plus, she’s fun. “Mostly, I’ve been laughing for a week,” Kreck admits.

In an unattributed claim, The Denver Post initially blamed Kreck’s ouster from the DCPA on McCain’s staff. The senator’s staff disputed that. A security guard who helped remove Kreck said, while being filmed by MSNBC, that U.S. Secret Service agents had ordered Kreck’s removal. The Secret Service denied it. And a DCPA spokeswoman told the Post that the security guard was “mistaken. . . . He is not a trained speaker in any way. It was the height (sic) of the moment.”

Said an amused Kreck, “She made it sound like some variation of Tourette’s syndrome. . . . I often get nervous, too, but it doesn’t cause me to blurt out ‘Secret Service.’ ” Kreck isn’t laughing about the serious issues, though.

She questions the relationship between federal officials and police in Denver, where the Democratic National Convention will be held Aug. 25-28. She wonders whether an institution built largely by taxpayer money - the DCPA - qualifies as private property.
Kreck also asks, “If you advertise a public town hall, open to the public, can you then cherry-pick the people you let inside?

“And if the Secret Service is so undiscriminating that they’re threatened by a little old lady with a McCain = Bush sign, how in hell are they going to deal with Recreate ‘68, Code Pink, anarchists, immigrants and, no doubt, more little old ladies?”

The Secret Service already is being sued by Denver attorney David Lane on behalf of Steven Howards, who was arrested in a Beaver Creek, Colo., mall where he told Dick Cheney that the vice president’s policies in the Middle East are reprehensible.
Charges against Howards were dropped, but Lane’s suit to protect Howards’ First and Fourth Amendment rights continues.
Lane also will represent Kreck in a civil lawsuit after defense lawyer Pete Hedeen handles her trespassing charge.
“I will not pay a fine, I will not accept diversion,” Kreck says in a blog on The Huffington Post Web site (www.huffington post.com). “That leaves two options: dropped charges or going to trial.”

McCain, meanwhile, has left Denver far behind. He met Monday with the National Council of La Raza and held a town hall Tuesday in New Mexico. But while no more “McCain = Bush” signs have been reported, the two mens resemblance to each other remains.

For that, McCain has only himself to blame. He sucked up shamelessly during Bush’s re-election four years ago, trying to capitalize on their shared ideology. McCain’s been trying to distance himself, though, ever since the president’s popularity took its long-overdue nose dive. In truth, though, McCain is more Bush-like than ever.

The Arizona senator now says Roe v. Wade, which he once supported, “should be overturned.” He and Bush both oppose abortion and support parental notification for minors seeking abortions. McCain now would make permanent the Bush tax cuts that he voted against in 2001 and in 2003. Indeed, he would add more corporate tax cuts on top of those Bush pushed through to benefit the richest Americans.

Best-known among McCain’s Bushite tendencies, of course, is his avid support of the Iraq invasion of 2003 and of the 2007 “surge” of increased troops. Add it all up, and it boils down to one simple equation. McCain = Bush.

Road Still Bumpy for McCain’s Retooled Bandwagon

Associated Press at Huffington Post, July 12th, 2008

HUDSON, Wis. — Every presidential campaign has its hitches. For John McCain, they felt more like full-blown lurches this week, with nearly every step forward quickly offset by a misstatement or wisecrack that seemed to blow his message off course.

It was the week McCain hoped to show off his newly focused, smoother-running operation after he rearranged his campaign hierarchy and acknowledged errors in the staging of events and other matters.

But a joke about U.S. cigarettes killing Iranians, criticism of the Social Security program and word that one of his top economic advisers had called the country “a nation of whiners” suffering a “mental recession” undermined the Arizona senator’s effort.

Democrat Barack Obama has had his own stumbles recently, but McCain’s journey through the key election states of Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin was bumpy.

McCain said he is not worried.

“I’m very aware that, from time to time, some words of mine will be taken out of context,” he told reporters Friday. “I’m not going to change the way our campaign is.”

AuditAZ, a non-partisan election integrity group has alleged that evidence and circumstances seem to indicate the possibility that the 2006 RTA election was rigged by Pima County election officials.  Chairman of the Pima Supervisors, Richard Elias says the facts seem to indicate that a re-count of the original ballots is needed.

Fox 11 Arizona, July 9th, 2008

By Deanna Morgan, Fox 11 News

It’s one of the basic elements of democracy: the people vote. But some people are now saying that two years ago, your vote on one local issue didn’t count as you intended.

The allegations are serious, involving the vote counting after the 2006 election which authorized the Regional Transportation Authority. It increased the sales tax by a half-cent, but members of the Pima County Democratic Party allege they have evidence that proves the RTA plan never passed.

“We have credible evidence from the mouth of the computer operator who said that he rigged it,” says Bill Risner, the lead attorney in the case. The only evidence is an affidavit, a statement from a man who says the computer operator of the Pima County Elections Division told him at a bar on First Avenue he, quote, “fixed” the RTA election because his bosses told him to.

About 120,000 ballots are sitting in the treasurer’s office that could be destroyed, but the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors says the County would be happy to recount them. “They are the ultimate evidence, and I think they should be counted,” says Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias.   Click here to read more at Fox11 Television.

Ex-Officials, James Baker and Warren Christopher, Offer Plan to Revamp War Powers Act

New York Times,  July 7th

WASHINGTON — Two former secretaries of state have declared the War Powers Resolution of 1973 obsolete and proposed a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle.

Their proposal would require the president to consult lawmakers before initiating combat lasting longer than a week except in rare cases requiring emergency action. Congress, for its part, would have 30 days to approve or disapprove of the military action.

The plan would create a new committee of Congressional leaders and relevant committee chairmen, with a full-time staff with access to military and intelligence material. The president would be required to consult with the group in advance of any extended strike.

Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James A. Baker III oversaw a year-long study of the longstanding tension over war powers between the executive and legislative branches. In a report to be released on Tuesday, they concluded that the 1973 law, which was passed in the waning days of the Vietnam War and which aimed to limit the president’s ability to commit American forces to war unilaterally, never served its intended function and must be replaced.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Tuesday,, Mr. Christopher, who served under former President Bill Clinton, and Mr. Baker, who served under the first President Bush, wrote that the 1973 act is “ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst. No president has recognized its constitutionality, and Congress has never pressed the issue. Nor has the Supreme Court ever ruled on its constitutionality.”  Click here to read more in the New York Times.

Today’s New York Times features this article about the McCain campaign and those who guide it.  It includes brief bios on the key advisers and lobbyists who run McCain’s campaign; Steve Schmidt, Mike Murphy, Rick Davis and of course, Karl Rove.

New York Times, July 7th 2008

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s campaigns have long been defined by internal squabbling and power plays, zigzagging lines of command and a penchant by the candidate for consulting with former advisers without alerting current ones, always a recipe for disquiet.

After a period of relative calm on that score, it is becoming clear that his campaign is once again a swirl of competing spheres of influence, clusters of friends, consultants and media advisers who represent a matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds. The cast includes the surviving members of Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, led by Rick Davis and Mark Salter; a new camp out of the world of Karl Rove, led by the recently ascendant Steve Schmidt; and on the periphery, the ever-present Mike Murphy, Mr. McCain’s strategist in the 2000 presidential race who has been dispensing advice to the candidate to the annoyance of the other camps, and is the subject of intensifying rumors in Republican circles that he is about to re-enter the campaign.

Mr. McCain is uncomfortable firing people or banishing them entirely. His orbit remains filled with people who have been demoted without being told they are being demoted, like Mr. Davis, who continues to hold the title of campaign manager even as Mr. Schmidt manages the campaign. Yet, Mr. McCain inspires uncommon loyalty in those who serve with him — hence the willingness of Mr. Murphy to consider coming back into the McCain campaign, despite his own rather brutal history of enmity with Mr. Davis.

Here is a guide to the forces and personalities to watch through the campaign and, presumably, into a McCain White House:

STEVE SCHMIDT A veteran of President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 who had been traveling around the country with Mr. McCain, Mr. Schmidt was sent back to headquarters and put in charge of, well, just about everything that matters. Mr. McCain characterized this as no big deal; others in his campaign said it was indeed a major shift as Mr. Schmidt in effect dislodged Mr. Davis.

Mr. Schmidt is working without compensation from the campaign, a way of signaling to people that he is prepared to return to his family in California should this latest shake-up not work. His ties with Mr. McCain are not as deep as those who worked in Mr. McCain’s first presidential campaign, and who are suspicious that Mr. Schmidt is something of a proxy for Mr. Rove.

MIKE MURPHY He has been in Mr. McCain’s orbit since he ran for president in 2000; it seems safe to say that few people understand Mr. McCain as well as Mr. Murphy does. He has on several occasions offered Mr. McCain blunt advice about how to fix his campaign. Mr. McCain has told two friends in recent weeks that that he would like Mr. Murphy as his senior strategist, and before the most recent shake-up that put Mr. Schmidt in charge, Mr. Murphy told at least one associate that he was interested in coming back.

It is not clear how Mr. Schmidt, among others, would react to that. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Schmidt had their differences when they worked together for the re-election of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, though by all accounts, those are mild compared with Mr. Murphy’s differences with other people in the various factions at Mr. McCain’s headquarters.

Mr. Schmidt did not return an e-mail message seeking comment. Mr. Murphy, while declining to comment about the possibility of his joining the McCain campaign, said that he admired Mr. Schmidt and that there were no differences between them.

“Steve Schmidt has been a friend of mine since I originally helped recruit him into the Arnold world back in 2005,” Mr. Murphy said. “Steve and I are friends, and we get along fine.”

One other potential hindrance to Mr. Murphy coming in: He is a founder of DC Navigators, a lobbying firm whose clients include insurance firms and the Indian Gaming Association, to name a few. Mr. McCain said he did not want any working lobbyists in his campaign. Mr. Murphy said his role at the firm was not as a lobbyist. “I’ve never been registered in my life,” he said. “I told my partners months ago that if I did McCain, I’d leave the firm.”

RICK DAVIS Mr. Davis is nothing if not a survivor. He managed to emerge from the staff wars of the McCain campaign last year as the manager — escaping blame as the campaign collapsed under the weight of its debt and was forced to lay off most of his staff. Mr. Davis without question deserves some credit for helping to steer Mr. McCain from the brink of withdrawal to securing the Republican nomination. Yet his management (and survival) skills do not necessarily translate into what it takes to run against a candidate like Senator Barack Obama; Mr. Davis came under fire as Mr. McCain’s campaign became characterized by missteps and squandered opportunities. He lost power after Mr. Schmidt went to Mr. McCain and warned him that he needed to make changes in his operation, or accept the fact that he is going to lose.

KARL ROVE You thought we were going to write a story about the internal dynamics of a Republican presidential campaign without mentioning Mr. Rove? The chief strategist for Mr. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Mr. Rove is not directly involved in the McCain campaign, but his presence there can be seen in the number of his protégés who now hold central roles there. Mr. Schmidt tops that list; coming in a very close second is Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Mr. Bush in 2004 and in the White House.

All of this intrigue breeds discouragement among even those former McCain associates who do not dispute the notion that voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which a McCain White House might be managed. They are hard-pressed to explain why Mr. McCain tolerates this — or encourages this — or why he has trouble cutting ties with people who have not served him well over the years.

“I can’t answer the why,” said John Weaver, who was one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers before being forced out in a shake-up last year. “It is just that way and for his own sake, he needs to finally, firmly decide where he wants to take this campaign.”

McCain says: “I’ll reduce deficit by winning war in Iraq.”

Huffington Post, July 7th

On Monday, John McCain released the outlines of his economic agenda, promising to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by saving money from achieving victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction,” McCain’s memo read.

But if the goal is to reduce deficit by cutting down on foreign expenditures, the question should be raised: whose Iraq plan — McCain’s or Barack Obama’s — would do more?

Estimating costs for troop withdrawal, long-term occupations, and even current operations, is a tricky business, made more complicated by the difficulties in pinpointing exactly what each candidate is seeking to do with U.S. troops once he enters office.

But the Congressional Budget Office has put out several possible templates for an American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan that offer an approximation of the costs of Obama and McCain’s policies. Should the candidates follow through with their proposals, taxpayers would be spending, perhaps, tens-of-billions (if not hundreds-of-billions) more under McCain. The Arizona Republican argues that this is a price worth paying. But it is still worthwhile noting just how much more his Iraq policy would contribute to the deficit.  Click here to read more about McCain’s proposal at the Huffington Post.

First the Iraqi’s announce that they don’t want to negotiate a long term Agreement of Forces treaty with the Bush Administration and that they want a timetable on the removal of foreign forces (soldiers and contractors) from their country.  Then Syria says there will be no peace with Israel until Bush is out of office.

Iraq Wants Timetable for US to Leave

Washington Post; July 7th

BAGHDAD, July 7 — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has for the first time suggested establishing a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a step that the Bush administration has long opposed.

Maliki floated the idea on Monday during a visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he spoke with Arab ambassadors about a security pact being negotiated to determine the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq. The agreement would replace a U.N. mandate authorizing the presence of the troops, which is set to expire Dec. 31.

Maliki said that Iraq has proposed a short-term memorandum of understanding with the United States instead of trying to forge a longer term pact on an issue that has spawned opposition across Iraq’s political divides.

“The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal,” Maliki said, according to a statement released Monday by his office that did not specify how long a period a memorandum would cover. “In all cases, the basis for any agreement will be respect for the full sovereignty of Iraq.” Click here to read more in the Washington Post.

Syria sees no Israel peace before Bush quits

Reuters; July 7th, 2008

PARIS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told a newspaper his country is unlikely to make peace with Israel while President George W. Bush remains in office.

However, in an interview published on the website of Le Figaro daily on Monday, Assad said he was betting that the next U.S. leader would get more involved in the peace process.

Assad said Syria and Israel were looking for common ground to start face-to-face negotiations, adding that it was vital to find the right country to mediate such talks.
“The most important thing in direct negotiations is who sponsors them,” Assad told Le Figaro, saying that the United States had an essential role to play.

“Frankly, we do not think that the current American administration is capable of making peace. It doesn’t have either the will or the vision and it only has a few months left,” he said.  Click here to read more on Syria and Israel at Reuters.